Friday, July 16, 2010

The Blog Is Dead! Long Live The Blog!

Ok, so I had a review ready to go for the J.J. Abrams Star Trek (short version: it’s fun), but I’m holding off for a bit because A) I’m running out of my backlog for movies that aren’t schlock and B) I’m at one of those transition phases where time and effort really should be diverted elsewhere and this week it really hit me that I had a choice to make about my “RMWC Reviews” Side project because the review format I’ve been working with for the last year is no longer viable or all that fun for that matter. I mean, I have a long list of reviews to write for films that I saw like four months ago. I look at that list and think “I REALLY don’t want to sit down and write a long review for Stripes because there’s not that much I want to say about it.”

What started out as a side project to deal with writer’s block has itself ironically fallen victim to writer’s block. Yeah, crazy, huh?

So the choice is either kill the project entirely because I’ve sunk a whole lot of words into something that doesn’t pay and I have no idea how many people are actually reading my ramblings OR I could throw in a compromise and work in a truncated, less strictly structured style that kind of goes back to how this blog was before I hit on the formula I’ve been using for the past year.

Lucky for you, I’ve chosen the way of compromise for two simple reasons.

1) I still end up watching a ton of movies and I am still learning a ton from them. Which is good, because it’s made me so much more aware of plotting and structuring my own scripts. Dialogue I’m comfortable with, but plotting has been tricky a lot of times and really, that’s where my true passion lies. As much as I have fun writing about the results of other people’s creativity, I’d much rather be working on completing my own creative projects (some of which are actually getting close to production and really deserve more of my attention right now). But thinking critically about the visual storytelling process (either films or video games) helps me as a writer, so that’s a good reason to at least keep my toes in the water.

2) It is incredibly cathartic to go on a rant every once in a while and simply vent out artistic frustration on a bad, bad movie. Some of the most fun I’ve had writing for this was in taking things like First Knight or the Star Wars Prequels to task, and there are certainly other films that deserve that treatment. And I definitely still want to do another Octoverride this year, despite the insanity of 31 consecutive days of posting.

To encapsulate things in an awkward metaphor: Castle RMWC is still standing, but over the next few [insert unit of time here], it’s going to go through some remodeling. For the next few weeks the reviews might not be on a regular schedule and they will most definitely be shorter in most cases (although the schlock films I rather like writing in the current style and would likely bring it out of mothballs on special occasions). I’d like to throw more videogame nerdiness into the mix and maybe do some spotlight features on subgenres, like crotchety rant about the current lamentable state of vampires in cinema. Conditions permitting, I’d even like to do some video postings, but that is going to require a bit more effort than sitting down and typing out some clever words. It’s just an idea but we’ll see how it shakes out.

So I guess that about does it. As always comments, criticisms and requests are welcome. Requests are definitely something I’m serious about looking into. For instance, if you want me to review Napoleon Dynamite, let me know (and likely let me borrow a copy since there is no way in Pluperfect Hell that I would watch that again AND pay money for it)